This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Martin Freeman, left, and John Callen in a scene from 'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.' (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures, Mark Pokorny)

Written by

Todd Hill
News Journal

A worrisome trend in cinema punctuation once again rears its head this week on the home-video release calendar: the preponderance of the colon. Of the three motion pictures out this week with colons in their titles, two of them use the device to differentiate the film from similar films that came before. Too many colons, too little originality.New movies

"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug." The Boston Globe's Ty Burr summed up this second film in Peter Jackson's second Middle Earth trilogy succinctly when he wrote, "Second verse, same as the first, a little bit shorter and a little less ...